Sunday, February 16, 2014

Mr. Foxman, Stop Crying Wolf!

Does antisemitism exist in the world today? Of course it
does. One would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to believe it doesn’t. It always
has and it probably always will. But I have to challenge Abe Foxman’s claim that it is at its worst since the Holocaust.

Really? Since the Holocaust? I’m sorry; I do not see any concentration
camps or death camps being built anywhere. And I am frankly upset at all the
paranoia about it by people who’s careers depend on the existence of Antisemitism. People like Abe Foxman who
earn a hefty salary of well over a half million dollars annually.

I do not begrudge being paid handsomely for a job well done.
I believe that the Anti Defamation League (ADL) is a valuable asset in combating Antisemitism where
ever it exists. But when the leader of that organization starts crying ‘wolf’
at the drop of a hat, I get suspicious. Especially since his job depends on fighting
that ‘wolf. Even if he makes these statements in the
context of his retirement announcement. He has announced his retirement effective
16 moths from now. That is a year and a half worth of salary worth nearly a
million dollars.

Mr. Foxman can easily point to incidents that have happened that were antisemitic over the last year. But what he does not do is look at
them in the context of our current status. Which is quite good these days.

And yet Mr. Foxman insists that his is the worst of times on this subject. This kind of declaration is counterproductive. It reinforce the paranoia that exists among some Jews
that the whole world is out to get us. And that is very far from the case.

Hasn’t Mr. Foxman noticed that this is perhaps the greatest
time in history to be a Jew since the destruction of the 2nd Temple
in Jerusalem? Does he not know about Vatican II? Has he not seen the incredible
warmth that the Catholic Church has increasingly displayed towards us since then?
Is there a greater philosemite than Pope Francis?

Has he not heard of Pastor John Hagee whose organization Christians United for Israel (CUFI)'s support for Israel rivals even the most pro Israel Jewish organizations? Does
he not know about 56 million Evangelicals who believe it is their biblical duty
to bless the Jewish people?

Is he blind to all the successes the Jewish people have
reached in all aspects of American society - reaching the highest echelons of academia, the professions, business,
government, and entertainment? Even the
sad fact of high rates of intermarriage is
a direct result of not only our acceptance, but the fact that it is now cool to
be Jewish! Has he not read the statistics that consider Judaism to be the most
popular religion in America?

One might say that this may be true in America but not in
the rest of the world, I would agree that there is a lot more antisemitism in
the rest of the world than there is here. But even that is changing. I have for example read story after story about
young Germans that had been kept in the dark by their parents or grandparents about
the Holocaust. When they started asking
questions about it and found out that their parents may have been complicit in
it, they came in many cases to totally reject their parents and have gone on to
do things to try and make amends in some way. In one case I read about, a discovery
by a German citizen that her father was a Nazi officer during the war led her
to eventually convert to Judaism. She now lives in Israel!

As recently as today, the German government has announced that
it is setting up a task force to find art looted by the Nazis during the war.
Their goal is to return them to their rightful owners or their descendants – many of whom were Jewish.

Here are some more facts that establish how different the world
is now. And these things happened in just this past year of 2013. From the Chicago Jewish News:

Plans for a memorial in Munich to 11 Israelis murdered at
the 1972 Summer Olympics there were unveiled. The planned hall of
remembrance is slated to be built near the site that housed the games and will
allow visitors to learn about the events and the victims. “We must not forget
the victims,” Bavarian Minister of Education and Cultural Affairs Ludwig Spaenle
said.

Spain’s ruling party has submitted a bill proposing to put
in place a procedure for granting Spanish citizenship to Sephardic Jews
descended from the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were forced to leave Spain
during the Spanish Inquisition. The bill proposes to naturalize applicants
irrespective of their country of residence and without requiring them to
relinquish any other nationalities they may already possess.

The Russian city of Rostov-on-Don has agreed to acknowledge
the Jewish identity of Holocaust victims killed there by the Nazis. The
municipality’s Memorial Council announced its decision to revise a memorial
plaque at the Zmievskaya Balka mass grave to mention the Jewish identity of the
majority of the approximately 27,000 bodies buried there in 1942.

The old plaque commemorates the “mass killing by the
fascists of captured Soviet citizens.” The new plaque will read: “The largest
site of mass killings in the Russian Federation of Jews by the Nazi invaders
during World War II.”

Poland’s parliament named 2014 the Year of Jan Karski,
honoring the man who alerted the allies about the Holocaust. Karski was a
courier for the Polish resistance during World War II. He infiltrated the
Warsaw Ghetto and was among the first to relay firsthand news of the Holocaust
to the West.

So I have to ask, Mr. Foxman? Does any of this indicate to
you that we are now in the midst of the most antisemitic period since the
Holocaust? Because if this is antisemitism - I’ll take it.

This does not mean that real antisemitism doesn’t exist at
all. Of course it does - as I said at the outset. Now-a-days it comes mostly in
the form of being anti Zionist. But even there one has to distinguish between
legitimate criticism and antisemitism disguised as anti Zionism.

To the extent that it exists at all, we have to be vigilant.
Which is why I believe that the ADL does serve a good purpose. If history has
taught us anything at all, it has taught us that. We need to have our
collective antennae up. You never know
what will happen to change things and it could happen suddenly. But to make the
claim now that antisemitism is at its worst since World War II is just plain ridiculous. It is tantamount
to crying wolf, when the wolf is nowhere near us.

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About Me

My outlook on Judaism is based mostly on the teachings of my primary Rebbe, Rabbi Aaron Soloveichik from whom I received my rabbinic ordination. It is also based on a search for spiritual truth. Among the various sources that put me on the right path, two great philosophic works stand out: “Halakhic Man” and “Lonely Man of Faith” authored by the pre-eminent Jewish philosopher and theologian, Rabbi, Dr. Joseph B. Soloveitchik. Of great significance is Rabbi, Dr. Norman Lamm's conceptualization and models of Torah U’Mada and Dr. Eliezer Berkovits who introduced me to the world of philosophic thought. Among my early influences were two pioneers of American Elementary Torah Chinuch, Rabbis Shmuel Kaufman and Yaakov Levi. The Yeshivos I attended were Yeshivas Telshe for early high school and more significantly, the Hebrew Theological College where for a period of ten years, my Rebbeim included such great Rabbinic figures as Rabbis Mordechai Rogov, Shmaryahu Meltzer, Yaakov Perlow, Herzl Kaplan, and Selig Starr. I also attended Roosevelt University where I received my Bachelor's Degree - majoring in Psychology.